‘Chandigarh fifth in Covid-19 deaths per million’

News article published in The Times of India on the COVID projections made by Dr Rijo M John, Senior Fellow at CPPR

The city is fifth in the country for Covid-19 deaths per million till June 1, according to calculations by Dr Rijo M John, a consultant economist and public health policy analyst based in Kerala. The analyst has considered the projected population for 2019.

The deaths per million for Delhi are the highest at 26.27 followed by Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The deaths per million for the country stood at 4.14, while Chandigarh’s was 3.51. Now, with five deaths, the city figure is 4.73.

“I have considered the Covid tracker as the source and the government’s portal for population projection until 2020.” said Dr John.

The population data was taken from GOI’s UIDAI projections for 2020. The analyst did these calculations after the cases started increasing daily. “As the number of Covid-19 cases near 2 lakh and growth rate is around 4.6%, it is important to see how stressed healthcare infrastructure is in each state in terms of number of hospitals and beds.”

For the hospital bed strength, Chandigarh ranks at the top in the country. There are 4,939 beds per million in the city, while the national average is 1,403.

U’khand man tests +ve in city

A 25-year-old resident of Uttarakhand who visited his mother in Sector 21, Chandigarh, tested positive on Wednesday. The patient worked in Patel Nagar, Delhi. He came from Delhi on May 22 to visit his mother working in a house. He developed fever and sore throat on June 1 and visited Government Multi-Specialty Hospital, Sector 16, the next day for check-up. He has two family contacts living in domestic help quarters of the house in Sector 21 and three other contacts (the owner’s family). All of them were quarantined and sampled on Wednesday.

This news article was published in The Times of India on June 4, 2020. Click here to read